


A clutch of AUs

by NekoNomi



Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:27:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23819200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoNomi/pseuds/NekoNomi
Summary: A series of largely un-related one-shot explorations of various Pern based AU concepts.
Kudos: 28





	1. Lady Bronzerider AU

**Author's Note:**

> An entry for Pern Au Monthly, April 2020, with the theme: AU where bronzes impress to women.

_Object: A partial scroll written by Weyrleader Valya, appearing to be part of corrospondence with her child, Harper Valdrim. The date is damaged, but the contents imply this was written during the fifth turn of the seventh Pass._

Everyone is taught that things weren’t always the way they are now, but it can be difficult for the younger generations to really grasp that as fact. That once the Weyrs were much like the holds, their power structure ruled by men, with only the gold riders as the sole bastion of female power. That things might forever have continued on that way, had we not been struck by a plague which primarily afflicted the young and healthy. You asked for my recollections of that time and I have written them as best I can.

It seemed in those days the healthier a person was before catching the sickness, the more likely they were to die. In the holds, where the men always had the first meal and the choicest of the food, it was they who were most likely to die, leaving their physically weaker wives and daughters to do the heavy labour to keep their holds running. The Weyrs isolated themselves early and were spared much of the illness, but that could only last so long. Weyrs are not truely self-sustaining populations like the holds are, we rely on outsiders coming in to provide enough candidates for the eggs, especially with a pass on the horizon.

I was not quite fifteen when the plague came to the cot holding, old enough to catch it, not so old that I died of it. My eldest brother was three turns older and not so lucky. The younger was little more than a child, spared even the smaller illness which I caught.

When the plague was over and the dragons came in search, there were no strong young men for them to find. Those small few who survived the illness had not been spared from lasting damage, prone to shakes or bouts of lost consciousness. In many places there were no boys of age to be found, only the elderly and the youngest of children.

They settled for taking the girls. It was known that greens would impress women as well as men, and sometimes the blues would do the same. It was reasoned that if they would accept women, then so too might the browns, leaving the small number of males available for their precious bronzes.

I was still fifteen, my name-day just barely past, when the riders came for me. I was always tall, broad shouldered and strong in build like my pa and uncles. I would do, they said. Perhaps a brown, they said, as though I couldn’t hear the tone that implied me less for my gender.

There was a golden egg on the sands the day that I impressed. The pretty, feminine girls were encouraged to stand nearer to it and further from the rest of the eggs, while the girls considered less desirable were put to the main clutch, expected to attract the greens and blues and stay out of the way of the handful of men while they were picked by the browns and bronzes.

There was only one bronze to hatch that day, and I’m sure you know by now how this tale goes. Rioth has always known his own mind, glaring up the youngsters who tried to stop him, moving as confidently as a new hatched dragon can as he made his way straight to where I stood. He knocked me down, leaving me those scars you once noticed upon my shoulders as he stood over me and declared me his.

When the chaos of hatching and impression had died down, only two of the boys had impressed, to the only browns. Every other dragon in that clutch of fifteen had chosen a woman, and I the sole bronze.

The results of the next clutches were much the same. For many turns it was difficult to find more than a handful of boys of age, nearly all of them were weyrbrats, as the holds and halls had none who could be spared from their work. Even now, when the ratios are more even, here at the High Reaches, the dragonets of all colours regularly choose women over men. This is not true in some of the other Weyrs, where it has settled to a more even split in rider gender for all but the golds, who still choose women almost exclusively.

As the first woman to ride bronze (and for a number of turns the only one to be bonded to one of the larger males, of either colour) I was pushed hard by the old men who taught us, had to prove myself twice as capable to be given half the credit as the next youngest bronzerider. I like to think I rose to the challenge.

Ten turns later, Rioth caught Selenkoth for the first time. Your other mother and I have had our differences over the turns, but we’ve always worked things out, especially after Selenkoth and Tiadri became senior on the gold’s fourth flight, and Rioth and I their Weyrleaders.

The other leaders were all men, ones who had clung to power from the days before the plague. Tiadri and I weren’t only the young pair hungry for change, and as she courted the other gold riders, I did the same to the young bronze and brown riders who had been kept from positions rightfully theirs by experience and talent, by the will of old men who could not accept that the world had moved on without them.

It was revolution, Valdrim, plain and simple.

In the course of a single turn, all the senior golds rose, and all the bronzes and browns chased after them, even those who had never shown interest in such high stakes pursuits before. Old men and old beasts stood little chance. Twelve months was all it took to stack the deck in our favour and force the system to change.

Things are fair now in a way they never were then. A weyr is a haven for women compared to the rest of Pern, as you’ll have been able to see for yourself now that you’ve been at the Hall for a time. A weyr is a place where we can be truely equal, where everyone can chart our own destinies and be true to be ourselves in every way which matters. It matters not your gender, or whom you choose to take to your bed, or if you choose to bed no-one at all. The holders may not like it, but they need us, especially with the Pass a bare half decade in. 

Still, it is considered good practise for a Weyrleader to pick a second of the opposite gender, if only for the sake of saving on the politics. There is still colourism in the ranks, which is proving far more difficult to be rid of, but even there we make progress, albeit slowly. C’mren of Blue Osoroth has been promoted to wingsecond of the High Flyers as of this month just passed. Having lead one revolution, I find myself reluctant to lead a second when things are progressing, even if I do not consider it swift enough for my liking. Threadfall must remain our top priority, even as we may wish things to be otherwise.

I hope I’ve been able to answer your questions. Remember, you are always welcome to come home.

All my love,  
Mother.


	2. Talent AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if the first dragons only existed because Kitty Ping was a Talent?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started life as a fill for PernAUMonthly’s April prompt of a Pern with Telepathy as standard, but quickly became a Talent AU and Windblossom character study instead.

Windblossom, for all her skill and Talent, was neither as skilled nor as Talented as her mother. She may have inherited Kitty’s micro-kinesis along with her dark hair and golden skintone, but she lacked her mother’s strength, a mere T3 rating compared to her mother’s T1. And while she’d been trained to the best of human ability, it was as nothing compared to her mother, the only human ever trained directly by the Eridani themselves.

So when her first attempts at recreating her mother’s success failed, no-one said a word. When her third set of eggs, lumpy and uneven but definitely eggs, proved non-viable in the end, there were whispers, suggestions that maybe another group of first generation dragons was not to be.

Windblossom knew the secret to the first dragons, the one which the other geneticists likely suspected but did not say aloud. Dragons existed only because of Kitty’s Talent. The old woman had used her skill to repair the TNA sequences as she went, allowing greater flexibility in her work, that she could alter non-viable ideas without needing to scrap a working and start over. Her daughter was not so skilled.

Her fifth batch of eggs made it to the sands, showing all sign that they were going to make it through to hatching. Twenty eggs in all, her best work yet. She was sure, so sure, that she’d cracked the secrets this time, and this time, there would be dragons.

The hatching was chaos, young men and women, some who had remained after the first hatching, others new, picked with the best of care and skill, stood and watched as only four of the eggs hatched. As those four completely failed to bond, or speak, or show any sign of the sapience the dragons had developed.

Windblossom looked upon her creations, strange small creatures with wrinkled skin and too large eyes and wings too small to ever carry them through the air even with telekinetic assistance. And she left for the lab, stating that the work needed to continue. When asked about them later, she would call them a mistake, results of gene sequences that did not work but were viable enough to survive to hatching. When asked later still, after the Whers had proved themselves self-sustaining, she would bluff, claim that the photophobic creatures were truely part of some great plan to help protect the people of Pern.

For now, however, as she settled once more before the gene sequencer, she put her head in her hands, and wept. Windblossom was her mother’s daughter, but she was never her Heir, not in skill, nor in Talent.


	3. Ever Green AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For PernAUMothly, July 2020: an AU in which dragons are all the same color at hatching.

All dragons start out green. They won’t gain their true colours for several months after hatching. Some are obvious from the start that they won’t stay that way, true greens are always female, so any male dragon will go on to become a blue, brown or bronze. And even the true greens change, going from their hatchling colours into whatever their true shade is.

I wait until Binath is sleeping before I left myself reflect on this. It is a fact, that all dragons hatch green.

A rare few remain green even when it is clear that their final colour should have been something else. Too big, too male, sometimes so clearly metallic, whatever failing of physiology kept the Ever Green from getting their true colours also causes them to be looked down upon by the rest of the Weyr.

Binath is five months old. She should have begun to colour by now. Her egg was the largest in the clutch, and she’s noticeably bigger than those of her brothers who are colouring bronze, her hide gleaming just as metallic as theirs. She is beginning to show signs of Commanding the others. Everything says she is a gold, a Queen. Yet she remains the same light green shade she has always been.

I don’t want her to think there is something wrong. She is perfect exactly as she is. So I push my worries away while she wakes. Only when she sleeps is it safe to think about.

There has never been an Ever Green Queen. I know, because I checked. Never in all the records has a Queen not coloured. What will they do when they realise Binath’s not going to colour? Already they begin to side-eye us.

 _Are you alright dearest?_ Binath’s eye cracks open, whirling slow and sleepy as she checks on me.

“I’m fine love” I whisper to her, rubbing her freckled head soothingly “Go back to sleep” She makes a soft grumbling sound but does as I ask.

I must admit to myself the truth. Binath is Ever Green and I don’t know what to do.


End file.
